• by Christine Champagne , December 1, 2009

UPS' cardboard world wows visually, but is it the right package?

You are always urged to think outside the box in business. But Doner was thinking inside the box - more specifically, inside the cardboard box - when the agency launched a microsite nestled within a cardboard box as part of The UPS Store's integrated Cardboard World campaign. "Our challenge in the brief was to bring Cardboard World to life online in an interactive way and tell the story of how The UPS Store is more than just shipping," explains Justin Smith, Doner executive vice president/executive creative director for interactive.

It seems that while everyone knows that The UPS Store offers shipping (after all, UPS is synonymous with shipping), people needed to be reminded that The UPS Store also provides a number of other services to small businesses, including notaries and office supplies, according to Smith, as well as a new online printing network.

So culling assets from animation collective PSYOP, which produced The UPS Store Card-board World commercials
that started rolling out last spring, Doner used in-house resources to construct cardboard.theUPSstore.com, a 3-D world that finds Joe Biz, the small business adventurer, in need of help prepping for a big pitch to a potential client. Small business owners driven to the site by online ads and search can assist Joe Biz by completing four games that highlight various UPS Store services, earning tokens along the way that will help Joe Biz make it to his meeting and gain them entry into a sweepstakes featuring instant daily prizes as well as a grand-prize trip to Hawaii.

OMMA got down to business with a trio of digital creatives - ROKKAN's Brian Carley, Saatchi & Saatchi LA's Ron Thompson and Digitas B2B specialist Ben Jones - to ask whether they found themselves immersed in The UPS Store's virtual Cardboard World or were ready to toss it into the recycling bin.

We first saw The UPS Store's Cardboard World in television commercials. Does it make a smooth transition to the online space?
Thompson: I love the overall campaign theme, and the TV spots really are great. They are so visually rich, and the look and feel translates online. They put a lot of effort into animating this online world, and it's pretty neat.
Jones: They did a nice job of successfully realizing the atmosphere that was presented on TV in the online space. The world is gorgeous and tactile and very interesting. Beautifully done.
Carley: The visual style is very unique, and Cardboard World seems like a really good fit for The UPS Store brand. I remember being struck by the visual look when I saw the commercials, and the site continues that cool visual style. But in terms of where they've taken the Joe Biz character online, I thought the story was a little bit hokey.
Visitors have to play games to help Joe Biz get ready for an important meeting. What do you think of that approach?
Carley: I was surprised. It is a fun idea, but I don't think a small business owner necessarily has time to play games.
Jones: I'm not against casual games online as a means of creating engagement, but they're probably not right from a B2B perspective. Business owners just don't have the time.
Thompson: The games were engaging. I went through trying to collect the tokens, but I'm not sure it was the right path for this particular audience.

That said, there is certainly incentive to take the time to play these games - you have a chance to enter a sweepstakes and win prizes, including a vacation to Hawaii.
Thompson: I can see the sweepstakes being valuable for some folks and a motivating factor to play all the way through the games and collect all of the tokens.
Carley: Sweep-stakes can be useful. It's a good way for the site to collect information. But it might have been better to give away money. If I'm a small business owner, I'm not necessarily going to want to take time off to go on a vacation.

The games were basic. In one, you had to toggle back and forth to catch documents. Another was a match game. Was the difficulty level appropriate for a general audience?
Thompson: The games were pretty simple. They weren't incredibly difficult games. It wasn't like playing Zelda. But the playability of the games could have been better.
Carley: I would say they were at an appropriate level for somebody who has never played a game before, and they were simple. But there were all these instructions before you got to each game, and then the games themselves were kind of long. Also, they weren't unlike any games I had ever seen before, and I didn't necessarily find them fun. They were a little boring.

But do you think that the games did a good job of informing you about the specific services that The UPS Store has to offer?
Jones: I don't think so. I thought the connection was tenuous.
Thompson: I came into it knowing what UPS does already - I know they ship. But the other services got lost in the games. I was too busy trying to collect tokens.
Carley: I played the four different games, but I don't think I could tell you exactly what the services were other than shipping.

How would you rate this site overall? Was it a success? A bomb? Or somewhere in between?
Carley: I would say it was a little bit of a bomb. If this site was simplified to do one thing and do it well, it may have been more successful. For example, if I could go into the site and craft my own small business plan, and I used Joe Biz to do that, and then I had a plan I could send around, involve some of those social networking tools that people talk about, that would have been interesting.
Thompson: I'd say it falls somewhere in between for me. I feel like the site could have been kept a lot simpler. Maybe there could have been just one game. There are other routes that could have been taken.
Jones: I don't think it was successful in marketing their small business services. But I do think it is a successful creative exercise. It really is beautiful. I would love a chance to do a site like this.

Are you willing to give Doner credit for doing something different in the B2B space, which tends to be more conservative and less experiential?
Jones: Definitely. I think it is great any time you can change the landscape of how people are interacting, and it is great that it isn't, 'Download a white paper.' It's immersive and interesting. But this has to be engaging to the small business owner, and it isn't. I would think this would mostly build the brand with CGI folks, animators and multimedia professionals. I just don't see a small business audience connecting to it.